


♦♠♣♥

by HenryMercury



Category: Kings
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clubbing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 15:15:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1692947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HenryMercury/pseuds/HenryMercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack takes the bowtie in his hands, threads it around David's neck, adjusts his shirt collar. Lets the pads of his fingers and the blunt tips of his nails scrape the scalp where David’s hair starts, just because he can.</p><p>What he doesn’t expect is the shiver, the crack in David’s exhale. They’re the tiniest of signs, virtually undetectable, but Jack is nothing if not an expert in recognising them, searching them out.</p><p>“That’s going to be a problem for you,” he murmurs. One small slip and now the bulk of Jack’s plans are irrelevant; David Shepherd won’t need to be brought down by lies when the truth will tarnish him twice as easily.</p><p>It’s going to be fun, ruining him. So much more fun than Jack had anticipated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	♦♠♣♥

**Author's Note:**

> For the purposes of this story, there is/was no Joseph.

 

♦ _Fine Things_

By the night of the banquet, the one in David’s honour, Jack has already been contemplating the new national hero’s fall back into obscurity for some days. He hardly expects it to be difficult to bring about—the boy is not equipped for life here, doesn’t know what it requires of a person the way Jack does. A little controversy here and there to smear the golden child and the royal family will lose interest. They’ve no reason to try and save David, not the way they chase down and iron out each of Jack’s perceived misdemeanours before the media can expose them.

Jack’s been given the task of finding David an appropriate outfit. That in itself is not a challenge—not with his family’s resources. He’s got one of his penguin suits, David, and the tailor together for a date in next to no time. David makes hesitant attempts at conversation, thanks Jack for lending him clothes when the whole point of everything right now is that Jack owes David his stupid life; the King and the country owe this farm boy their prince.

Jack won’t thank him for that, not earnestly. He doesn’t like the appearance of indebtedness, let alone the feeling of it.

Jack just hangs around while the tailor works, keeping an eye out as he was instructed.

He catches glimpses of bare torso as David changes, sees toned muscle there. He’s no stranger to that, but it’s never a hardship to look.

He wanders over and takes his bowtie—now David’s—in his hands, threads it around David's neck, adjusts the collar. Lets the pads of his fingers and the blunt tips of his fingernails scrape the scalp where David’s hair starts, just because he can.

What he doesn’t expect is the shiver, the crack in David’s exhale. They’re the tiniest of signs, virtually undetectable, but Jack is nothing if not an expert in recognising them, searching them out.

“That’s going to be a problem for you,” he murmurs, mostly to himself. One small slip and now the bulk of Jack’s plans are irrelevant; David Shepherd won’t need to be brought down by lies when the truth will tarnish him twice as easily.

It’s going to be fun, ruining him. So much more fun than Jack had anticipated.

♦

Jack watches David slip out of the party room, follows him with his eyes and then, once he can excuse himself, with the rest of his body.

He finds him sitting at the piano, pressing the ivories down lightly, reverently. The tune is simple but pleasant, in a way possessed of much the same charm as the man who plays it.

“Ditching your own party?” he asks, hovering by the doorway.

David looks up, hands faltering in their dance over the keys. He doesn’t say anything, but he looks like he’s searching for an excuse.

“Hey, I’m not judging,” Jack offers. “It’s not for everybody; royalty, politics.”

“I don’t even know the first thing about how to act here,” David admits, as though that particular fact weren’t glaringly obvious already. “Before, I was nobody to anyone but my family, my friends—and now the king is asking me what kind of reward I want from him. I didn’t do what I did for a reward.”

Jack strides slowly across the room, stops at David’s side. He leans against the piano, brushes the polished wood with a hand.

“Do you know how much this piano is worth?” he asks.

David shakes his head.

Jack chuckles. “Neither do I. Priceless antiques are tricky like that.”

He watches David’s hands leave the keyboard suddenly, like he thinks his touch will stain them.

Jack smiles down at the boy, the kind of smile he knows works magic on anyone and everyone who swings his way, as well as some who ordinarily don’t.

“No, go on,” he urges. “Keep playing. For all the priceless pianos we have here, it’s rare to actually hear any pleasant music.”

The hopeful look David gives him in return is something that may well melt any other man or woman, but Jack doesn’t let it thaw him—won’t let it.

“I’m sure if you asked for it, my father would give you the instrument as a gift,” Jack suggests.

“I could never,” says David, but his fingers keep moving, and the tune keeps echoing around the room, filling it as if making it whole, repairing cracks left by dry silence, clearing away the kind of cobwebs that no cleaning staff can remove. Jack lets himself enjoy the smooth sound of it, just a little.

“Oh, but you could. And you should, because otherwise he’ll just keep trying to give you other things—things you don’t want. Better for the both of you simply to allow him the satisfaction of granting you something you actually like.”

David hums thoughtfully. “I guess so,” he says.

Jack grins, another assault of charm, and turns so that he can take a seat beside David on the piano stool. He feels their shoulders brush, hears David’s breath hitch just like before.

“So, tell me about this piece of music,” he asks. “Where did you learn to play?” Jack tries not to be troubled by the realisation that he actually does kind of want to know.

 

 

♠ _Digging_

Jack sees to it that David is uninvited to the ballet. It isn’t hard, what with his mother already concerned by the foothold the boy seems to be maintaining. A little nudge, a little expression of fabricated concern that Michelle and David may be growing overfond of one another, and Jack is given full leave to take the golden boy out and get him as fucked up as he possibly can—which will be pretty goddamn fucked up. Jack is an expert with these things.

He makes a show of abandoning his own seat, slings an arm around David’s shoulder and enjoys leading the lamb astray.

♠

At the club, Jack recruits Claudia to his cause. She throws him a smile so sharp it’s nearly fanged and proceeds to push herself up against Shepherd’s side, pressing whispers into his ear with soft lips.

Jack is almost gratified to see that it doesn’t work, _she_ doesn’t work, and soon enough Claudia gets a clue and replaces herself with a boy she knows. Jack has seen the guy around, doesn’t know his name, hasn’t fucked him in any state that allows him to recall it now. He’s pretty enough; tall, if a little skinny, with dark hair that flaps down around his ears, a lip piercing that glints under the roaming, flickering electric lights. He buys David a drink, places a hand on his shoulder, moves in close enough to snatch air out of David’s mouth, and David doesn’t push him away, doesn’t excuse himself. He looks strained for a second, not so much uncomfortable as uncertain, but he evidently decides to go with it, because he’s soon relaxing into the guy’s chest, letting their mouths meld.

Jack watches, pleased because this means he was right.

He can’t help but think that usually being right feels better than this, though.

♠

Jack brings Claudia home with him, and they sit in his room drinking expensive liquor and talking about whatever is both interesting and tame enough to be discussed. Shepherd has brought the tall man back with him, Jack knows, and he can’t help but wonder how that particular escapade is going.

For every twinge of almost-jealousy he detects, Jack downs another mouthful of bourbon, or vodka, or whatever’s at hand.

Just because David is presently fucking some other guy, some nobody, doesn’t mean that Jack couldn’t have him if he wanted. It is, in fact, _proof_ that Jack could have him; now he can be sure that David’s weakness is the same as his own.

 

Except that when Claudia goes downstairs to fetch the coffee she decides she wants, she returns with the report that David is alone, having sent the other man away. _He said he couldn’t dig any more_ , Claudia tells him, and Jack is once again left to wonder exactly what it is that David Shepherd is made from.

 

“I didn’t even know his name,” David explains, later. “I asked what it was more times than I counted, but every time he either didn’t hear me, or pretended not to, or said it didn’t matter, asked what I’d like to call him.”

“I told you people would throw themselves at your feet,” Jack drawls. “I told you how they would act.”

“I know you did,” David sighs. “I guess I’m just not quite cut out for it. I’m not asking for love, from a stranger, but I want something that’s at least a little more real than... that.”

“There’s not a whole lot that’s real around here, soldier, but you keep on looking if it makes you happy.”

“I know that some things are real,” David shakes his head. “More often than not they’re hidden—buried, even—but they’re still there.” He looks at Jack as he says it, a look with such intent that Jack would have to be misreading the signs to interpret as accidental, coincidental or inconsequential.

It rubs him the wrong way, rubs him raw, because David isn’t supposed to see genuineness in Jack. Jack is lying to him, Jack wants him in ruins, wants him wrecked and on his knees before him in every way possible. David isn’t supposed to turn to him with that fucking earnest look, and imply that Jack’s a good person in any way at all.

David thinks he does the opposite of digging, thinks his honesty and goodness builds people up—but really, it’s just as bad. It’s _worse._ It makes him glimmer with the same special light that sets the royal family aside, makes people want a piece of him the same way they want a taste, a touch, a word from Jack—but all David’s morality doesn’t allow them to sink as deep as need be to get that attention, leaves them stranded and questioning themselves for even thinking those depraved thoughts.

David doesn’t dig, but he compels people to point their own shovels inwards, and that exercise is infinitely more painful.

Jack doesn’t like this kind of pain.

 

 

♣ _Jack of Clubs_

“We got the pictures you wanted.”

Jack is handed a thin folder of printed photographs.

“Still want to leak them?”

“No,” Jack decides. “Not just yet.”

He takes the folder with him, waits until he’s locked in his chambers before he flips it open.

There is David, pinned up against a wall by the nameless boy, their mouths locked together tightly.  
There is David, nibbling at the other boy’s lower lip, looking breathless, and Jack can imagine the hot air that must be ghosting over the other boy’s cheek, moist and alcoholic.  
There is David, groaning as a thigh is pressed in between his own, head knocking back against the bricks behind him, eyes fallen shut.

Jack sinks down, sprawls out over the lush mattress of his bed, undoes his trousers and slips a hand inside.

♣

David looks surprised when Jack informs him they’re going out again, but he doesn’t protest, which is certainly a start.

“I can’t promise it won’t end the same way as last time, though,” the kid apologises, one of those stupid apologies that don’t mean anything, because he’d be saying the same thing if he _had_ gone through with fucking some stranger.

“I promise you it won’t be the same as last time,” Jack counters.

♣

They go deeper underground this time, to one of the parties that throbs in a basement somewhere, down stairs and behind closed doors. Here, nobody looks too hard at anything or anyone; even if it weren’t for the blinding strobe and masking smoke, this is the kind of place that nobody ever goes—not when you ask them to admit it in the light of day.

David seems a little overwhelmed, but really that’s the whole attraction. Jack commandeers a couple of drinks for them, then a couple more, and then pulls David into the crowd. They get lost in the tangling limbs, buffeted and held aloft by the music and the darkness and the sway of alcohol, like the air around them is actually a sea.

Bodies push in close, rubbing and grinding, then slipping away again. It’s anonymous, but not in the way David had disliked before; they are anonymous here too, not celebrities amongst fawning fans.

“What do you think?” Jack asks, breathing hotly into David’s ear.

“Better,” David replies.

He’s a terrible dancer, that much is clear, but then there isn’t all that much dancing to be done on this floor, just swaying and gyrating. They’re already shoved close together, so it’s easy for Jack to slide his hands around David’s neck.

David looks lost for something to hold on to himself, eventually settling his hands on Jack’s waist. They’re big and firm, and Jack wants them underneath the t-shirt he’s wearing instead of over it.

He leans in closer still, uses the control his hands have over David’s neck to hold his face still. He stops an inch before their lips touch, and David’s eyes flicker up to meet his, questioning.

“Are you sure?” is all he says.

Jack moves infinitesimally closer.

It’s all the answer David needs, because the next thing Jack knows the whole world is nothing but a scorching kiss, open-mouthed and dirtier than anything the golden boy—tarnished by Jack’s own brand of vice or not—should be able to deliver.

There are hands clutching at hair, tongue and teeth clashing, fingers finally wandering up under the hem of his shirt to press into bare skin, the taste of alcohol and smoke and, fuck,that perfect musky twinge that makes it so impossible for Jack to give up the pleasure of men—like a deep, dry wine, where a woman’s taste is too sweet.

They stay together throughout night, occasionally joined by men or women who dance with them or drink with them for brief intervals. None of them matter enough to Jack to be remembered; his attention is on David, the prize, the fun he can have with the surprisingly imperfect perfect saviour before he screws him up and throws him away. David, for his part, is focused intently on Jack—probably his monogamous tendencies coming into play. Nonetheless it’s kind of heady, being the object of that determination, Jack will admit with this much alcohol in his system.

And of course, they leave together too. Jack leans drunkenly on David’s shoulder as they sit together in the back seat of the car.

“My name’s Jack,” he whispers, offering what the tall boy from David’s first night out couldn’t. “Want to come back to my place?”

The look David gives him is hard to read, but he groans when Jack scrapes teeth over his ear, responds by sliding a hand over the top of Jack’s thigh, and doesn’t voice a word of protest—not until long afterwards, when Jack tells him to move his lazy ass to the en suite shower before he can fall asleep all crusty and disgusting in Jack’s bed.

Jack doesn’t kick him out, and when David seems to waver between staying and leaving he just slides over to one side of the bed, making room, and looks at the golden boy expectantly. The smile David gives him is broad and bright even in the darkness. Jack shuts his eyes before it can blind him, but he still sees it burnt on to the backs of his eyelids.

 

♥ _King of Hearts_

“I don’t think it was an accident,” David murmurs into the skin of Jack’s neck, just above his collarbone where bruises are no doubt already forming.

“What wasn’t an accident?” Jack prompts, when David doesn’t finish the statement.

“That He gave us this in common,” David answers. “Something to bring us together when we might otherwise have torn each other apart.”

Jack wants to tell him he’s a fool, that all that tearing may well happen yet, but of course that would ruin the surprise.

“Sure,” he agrees. “If you think so.”

“I do, and I’m glad,” David runs a calloused hand over Jack’s ribs, sweeps it over his nipple and releases a shudder like ripples on the surface of a pond. He sounds so fucking earnest—not that he ever _doesn’t_ —but it’s even harder to stomach when Jack knows he’s never deserved the way David speaks about him. David will see that when the time comes, and Jack brings him and all his virtue down like a house of cards.

He _doesn’t_ wish that he did deserve it, doesn’t wish he could accept David’s affection, doesn’t wish he could just stay here in bed with the one person who seems to see something, _anything_ in Jack that’s actually worth caring about. He doesn’t. Because that would ruin everything.

♥

“Of course we can’t tell him,” Jack hisses, when David broaches the idea of telling the world, telling _Silas_. “He already knows that I... he knows I’m the way that I am—but don’t think his adoration won’t give way to disgust faster than you can even say _But that’s not fair_.”

“I’ve told him things he didn’t want to hear before. I won’t lie when the truth needs to be told.”

“ _Why_ does this truth need to be told, though?” Jack stretches, rolls off the bed and starts gathering up his clothes, pulling them back on. He tosses David’s shirt at him, a reminder to hurry since they both have to be at the court in ten minutes, and rushing in together, rumpled and equally late, is not an option.

“You know why,” David answers firmly, and when Jack looks up he finds himself caught by one of those resolute blue stares, the kind that pin your soul down and preach to it.

And Jack does know why. He knows the agony of denying every fibre of your own being out of fear, self-loathing. He’s known it for longer than he can remember clearly. The thought of letting it all out... the consequences would be disastrous, but the idea still tempts him each and every day. Sometimes, when he’s low and tired and the kingship feels too far out of reach he wonders what it might be like to run away, become someone else altogether, someone with all the traits that Prince Jack Benjamin isn’t allowed to have.

Jack finishes dressing himself and leaves without another word. By now David knows the routine; he’ll wander in to the court room a handful of minutes after Jack, take his place by Silas’ right hand and go about advising Jack’s father like Jack’s dick wasn’t in his mouth less than an hour prior. The two of them will make minimal eye contact, address each other formally, Jack will argue jealously but David will prevail with Silas’ and God’s favour pouring down upon his golden head.

♥

David goes on Pilgrimage with Silas.

Jack has never been invited to go on Pilgrimage. Nobody has ever been invited to go on Pilgrimage.

While they’re gone the city feels empty. Jack would suggest that the king’s absence should have such an effect, but his father goes every year and it’s never felt anything like this.

One night, swayed from reason by more than enough scotch, he seriously entertains the possibility of not throwing David under the bus, of not giving him up. Of keeping him, his own secret, his own private affirmation that Jack is worth something. He wonders whether being king will feel better than the sensation of a smiling David pressed tight against him, and in that moment, alone in his empty bed, he can’t imagine that it could.

 

Of course, David takes the choice away from him.

“I told your father,” he says, breathless with something like relieved excitement, as though relief has _any_ part in the situation. “I told him about us.”

Jack rubs a hand down over his face and tells David he’s an idiot, tells him to be ready for the shitstorm he’s brought down upon himself. Once he exits the room, Jack throws his crystal decanter of scotch at the wall with all his might.

♥

David departs swiftly and doesn’t return for far too long. Jack would be certain of his death, if it weren’t for that lingering suspicion that god doesn’t let go of his favoured ones that easily, and, even if god himself should fail to sustain him, David’s stubbornness will see him home in one piece. Two, maybe, if god or fate decides to teach him a lesson about _being an idiot_. He’ll be back in no more than three pieces, Jack knows it somehow.

He hasn’t prayed much in the past few years, not since he began to discover that god had even less interest in him than Silas did, but he stands—he won’t kneel, not until he’s truly desperate—by the foot of his empty bed and pleads quietly that He send back the one good thing that ever came to Jack.

 

And, whether by god’s hand or his own plain mulish stubbornness, David does return, with Gilboa’s stolen Charter under his arm.

 

Jack knows better than to let himself be happy, better than to believe any of it will last—but the sight of David being dragged away to the prison still bruises something inside of him, and the words slice anyway, as his father tells him he’ll be speaking for the prosecution at David’s trial, spouting whatever lies are handed to him, fabricating the necessary evidence, bribing or threatening the necessary witnesses. Silas taunts him with rewards of power if he proves himself, Cross insists it’s a perfect opportunity to showcase the king’s inadequacy, and underneath it all lies the threat of his own outing, his own disgrace, the total ruin of his hopes of being king.

In truth, Jack is just so fucking tired. He’s tried being a person, and it’s only tortured him. Why not just be the puppet that everyone wants him to be?

♥

_“Jack, please, stop telling these lies,” David pleads, as Jack glares in through the bars of his cell, holding himself in the taut posture of a soldier, schooling anything and everything but practiced disdain from his face._

_“Jack—the time on the video—we were together. If you stop letting yourself be used as a mouthpiece and find some way to tell them the truth—”_

_“Jack, there’s a plot against the king. You should be careful too—”_

Jack wishes that David fucking Shepherd and his blue eyes and his goddamned integrity had never scrambled into that hostage tent. Jack wishes he were dead, simply and easily gone, mourned before he could become despised.

_“Stop talking, David,” he says, feels himself standing in front of the whole court, the whole country, feels the truth pouring out of his mouth._

_“You are no prince, you faggot!” Silas screams. “Fucking faggots and traitors, the both of you,” he points at Jack, at David, at the audience at large._

 Jack has never been more afraid in his life—and yet neither has he been less afraid.

♥

Really, Jack already knew that god didn’t want him to be king. Nobody wants him—his country does not want him for a ruler, his father does not want him for a son, god does not wish to waste His favour on Jack, and now his lover—the first person to actually, Jack’s afraid, deserve every letter of that title—does not want him for everything else that he is. All his life, Jack has been denied the acceptance to be what he is, and the opportunity to become what he has wanted to be.

And now, he is denied the simple mercy of death.

Jack sits in his softly furnished prison, looks out the window as Lucinda passes the time napping, having wasted all her energy on tears.

Bitterly, he speaks to the only being who might, even maybe, be there to listen.

“Just let him be okay,” he prays. “He deserved better.”

He falls asleep in the chair by the window, awakes again to a darkened room and a sound like rain, pummelling the nearby glass. He rubs his eyes, tries to focus. Rain tonight is an unexpected turn of events.

Only it isn’t rain—he sees that once his eyes adjust and he gets a closer look. What it _is_ makes even less sense that unseasonal rain. It’s fucking _butterflies._ Jack has no idea how they’re making this much noise just by knocking gently against the window pane—but then, god works in fucking incomprehensible ways, doesn’t he. Lucinda’s still resting, not bothered by the noise, if it is in fact audible to anyone else. If it isn’t just Jack, finally losing the last little piece of his mind.

The butterflies land suddenly, lining the outside of the window sill.

“What the hell?” Jack asks the air, asks Him, because he finally knows what it feels like, to be spoken to by god. It’s confusing. Maddening. He wonders whether David has to put up with this kind of thing on a regular basis.

Out of curiosity, he tugs at the window. It rolls up, as though there weren’t new locks installed when he was sentenced to spend the rest of his half-life here.

He’s a storey above the ground, but the butterflies are up and fluttering again, like they’re waiting for him to follow them. He swears to himself, looks down at the drop, the limited footholds to be found in decorative rows of protruding bricks, window sills and, further to the side, a lattice of vines.

He has the forethought to pull on an overcoat before clambering outside. One by one, the butterflies land on him—his arms, his face, though never the top of his head, never the living crown that god sent Silas. They feel instead like a living blanket, a shield, assurance that he won’t fall down the wall, because he isn’t scaling it alone.

There’s a car waiting when he reaches the bottom—black, sleek enough to be inconspicuous around the mansion but ordinary enough to pass relatively unnoticed on the streets outside its gates. The car, like the window, is unlocked; key left in the ignition, as though anyone in the royal service would be so negligent.

Jack climbs in without hesitation and drives. He has no idea exactly where he’s going, only this strange new certainty in his gut and the occasional flash of orange wings to guide him. For once in his miserable life, he doesn’t worry—god is leading him, and he already knows exactly who He’s taking him to see.


End file.
